Pat, Jeff, Andy and You Will Soon Be Visiting Utah Beach. It Is a Place Which Occupies

Pete Pryor

March 6, 2002

Dear Ellie,

You have asked me to recount what I did on D-day and in the period immediately following. I will do so with two misgivings: (1) In truth, I did not do anything worth recounting - nothing heroic or unusual; (2) We are talking about events which occurred more than 57 years ago. Memory, as we know, is a perishable commodity which does not improve with age. What was once remembered with vivid clarity becomes murky with the passage of years. Also, memory is selective. Trivial events are remembered while important events are forgotten. Nevertheless, despite these considerations, which cause me some hesitation, I will do my best to put down accurately, as I remember them, the facts associated with my landing in France in June of 1944 and the period immediately following.

Pat, Jeff, Andy and you will soon be visiting Utah Beach. It is a place which occupies a niche in my personal history like none other. I am delighted that you will soon be walking over terrain that is not only hallowed in American history but in my personal history as well, even though all I did was go where I was ordered to go and do what I was ordered to do.

I landed at Utah Beach mid-morning of June 6, 1944, some time between 10:00 and 11:00 A.M. H-Hour took place several hours earlier, at 6:30 A.M. Even before H-hour, in the early morning hours while it was still dark, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne Divisions started to land in Normandy at various places along the French coast, including St. Mere Eglise, just inland from what came to be known as Utah Beach.

My outfit, the 1st Engineer Special Brigade, commanded by Col Eugene Caffey, was part of the 7th Corps, commanded by Gen. Lawton Collins. We were all part of Gen. Omar Bradley’s First Army. Some units of the 1st Engineers landed on Utah Beach at H-Hour; others came ashore on Omaha Beach, a short distance to the east. The fighting at Omaha Beach was much more intense than at Utah Beach and the casualties were much higher. To the east of Omaha Beach the British landed at Sword, Juno and Gold Beaches, near Caen, where probably the fiercest fighting of the invasion took place. That I came ashore at Utah, rather than Omaha, Sword, Juno or Gold was sheer good fortune.

On June 5th, my outfit was in a marshaling area outside a Channel port whose name I never learned. Security was extraordinarily tight. We were not told where we were or where we were headed. The entire marshaling area was quarantined. Nobody was allowed in or out. We were not allowed to write letters. Toward dusk we were told to get ready to move out in full gear. We marched out of the marshaling area on foot, toward a waiting LSI (Landing Ship Infantry) which would take us to France. It was during this march, that as I was going past an apartment house where, in accordance with English blackout regulations, all windows were draped in blackout curtains, a little girl raised the curtain in the window of a ground-floor apartment to reveal a sign she had made, reading "Good luck Yanks".

Many other soldiers had preceded us into the LSI and many soldiers followed us. All night there was constant airplane traffic overhead, with American and British planes going to and returning from the continent in what seemed like unending waves. During the night we were not told what was happening in the war, but we had a pretty good idea that the long-expected invasion had begun or was about to begin. The LSI got under way during the early morning hours of June 6th. In the Channel, as the darkness lifted, we could make out naval vessels of all kinds and on all sides, as far as the eye could see, more ships than I had ever before seen at one time at one place in my entire life. Shortly after we got under way, an announcement was made on the loudspeaker of the LSI that during the night American and British paratroopers had been dropped in French territory and Allied soldiers had begun landing on the French coast. We cheered the announcement as if our home team had just won the World Series, but I am sure none of could resist wondering what would befall us in the next few hours. Where were we going? What would await us? Would we ever reach France? On the trip over, would we be vulnerable to German mines, planes, submarines, long-range artillery?

The announcement on the LSI confirmed what most of us had already guessed: this was the beginning of the long-awaited invasion. There were several tell-tale signs pointing in that direction. A few days earlier we had moved from St. Austell in Cornwall to a marshaling area near an undisclosed port on the Channel coast. Just before we left the marshaling area on the night of June 5th, our C.O. had read to us General Eisenhower’s message wishing us Godspeed as we embarked on the Great Crusade. So it was rather clear to us as we marched to the LSI, even before the announcement on the loudspeaker, that after countless rumors and many delays, the invasion had really begun and we would be part of it. In the days leading up to June 6th, guessing when the invasion would begin had been our great pastime. Some of the men even placed bets on the exact date. Now the doubt and the guessing were at an end. On all sides you could hear soldiers saying "This is it". There was no need to ask what "it" was. We all knew.

As we neared the coast of France we could see smoke billowing from some of the naval vessels in the Channel, followed by flashes of light along a wide swathe of the shoreline and then sound of explosions. It was an incredible scene - so many planes overhead, so many ships all around us, the flashes of light from the French coast, the distant sound of bursting bombs which filled the air and lit up the sky ahead of us, knowing that in a few minutes we would no longer be spectators but full participants. Surely and without question the scene in the Channel as our LSI made its way to the French coast was the most memorable scene I had ever witnessed, up to then or since. I can still remember saying to Hal Sutliff, one of my buddies in the 1st Engineers who was standing alongside me on the deck of the LSI: "Hal, a hundred years from now schoolchildren will be studying what you and I are now a part of." He agreed.

When we were about 200 yards offshore a number of amphibious vessels came swarming to our LSI from the beach. By squads, we all clambered down the rope ladder on the side of the LSI into these vessels, which we had practiced many times before in our training exercises. The acronym for these amphibious vessels was DUKW, so of course they were known as "Ducks". Other outfits were taken ashore in larger amphibious vessels called Higgins Boats.

The helmets of all soldiers in the 1st Engineers had blue half circles painted across the front. We carried our weapons (mine was an M-1, Garand rifle, with bayonet, which we hung on our ammunition belts), a gas mask and a canteen of water. In our ammo belts we carried ammunition, penicillin powder and other first aid medications. Whether or not we carried rolled-up sleeping bags on our shoulders or whether the sleeping bags were distributed to us on the beach, I am unable, despite best efforts, to remember.

As we debarked from the LSI into the Ducks and as the Ducks moved toward the shore, we could see that the tide was low, disclosing hundreds of underwater barbed wire obstacles placed there by the Germans. When we came closer to the shoreline but had not yet reached it, the Ducks stopped and we were given the order to "dismount and move in". We were in knee-deep water. Ahead of us we could see soldiers from the 4th Division mopping up, having just about cleared the beach before we landed. We could also see several dozen German prisoners of war on their knees, with U.S. soldiers standing over them, rifles at the ready. From the water’s edge to the seawall the beach went uphill. As we made our way up the beach we could hear and feel a two-way artillery duel: Inland German batteries were shelling our positions on the beach while Allied cruisers and destroyers standing offshore behind us were lobbing shells over our positions into the Germans who were retreating from St. Mere Eglise, a few miles ahead of us. We could also hear steady rifle and machine gun fire in front of us, between the seawall and St. Mere Eglise. As you can imagine, there was a lot of noise and a lot of running about, but the soldiers who had preceded us (4th Division, 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne) had done an excellent job of wiping out enemy machine gun and small arms fire on Utah Beach, which meant we only had to contend with mortar and artillery fire and this was not concentrated, heavy or sustained.

Some of the 4th Division soldiers on the beach were firing mortars inland. Others were climbing over the seawall which was (and probably still is) behind the beach. We could also see wounded soldiers on stretchers and the covered bodies of a few soldiers who had been killed in the earlier fighting before we landed. Slightly behind the seawall there was a German pillbox with machine guns trained on the beach right in front of us. By the time we landed the pillbox had been taken out by soldiers from the 4th Division, and the German soldiers who had earlier manned it were either dead or taken prisoner. Sporadically we could see and hear flashes and explosions in front of us as German batteries, from behind the seawall, shelled the beach where we were landing, but it was not a heavy or continuous shelling and there seemed not to be any pattern to the bombardment. Above us, Allied fighter-bombers were dropping bombs about two miles ahead of us, in what must have been the area of St. Mere Eglise. Sometimes the ground under us shook when the bombs landed. Whenever that happened we would cheer and call out words of encouragement to the airmen - "Atta Boy!" "Give ‘em hell!". Of course the airmen could not hear us. From time to time somebody would call out "Hit the deck" or "Incoming" and we would fall on our stomachs with our chins digging into the sand until somebody called out "All clear." I would guess that the enemy ordnance which landed closest to me was about 30 yards away, which means that we were very lucky to be stationed where we were. By comparison, seven weeks later, on July 25th, when we were in foxholes outside St. Lo, the greatest Allied bombardment of the war up to that time took place, and Allied bombs - the so-called "friendly fire"- dropped just as close to us as the enemy bombs on Utah Beach - if not closer.)

After landing and moving up the beach to the seawall, my squad was ordered immediately to start preparing to cordon off several German prisoners who had surrendered before our arrival and to prepare for an expected influx of more prisoners. Other squads were ordered to mark off areas on the beach where the ammo and gasoline would be stored. As we started to carry out our orders, somebody barked at us: "Let’s go, Let’s go. Let’s get a move on". It was Col. Eugene Caffey, commander of the 1st Engineers. He was standing next to somebody whom I recognized from newspaper photographs - Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt, cousin of FDR and second in command of the 4th Division. A few days later he died of a heart attack. When I saw him standing next to Col. Caffey, Gen. Roosevelt was leaning on a cane and I wondered how he had ever managed to pass his Army physical when he was unable to stand without a cane.

Every once in a while we would be told that some German soldiers had been captured and we would make our way over to the designated spot and pick up the prisoners and bring them back to the pens which were being erected on the beach. Enlisted men were separated from officers. Sometimes we would escort prisoners to the place where they would be debriefed by soldiers in the Counter-Intelligence Corps. At first, all the prisoners were Germans. But as the days wore on, many of the prisoners turned out to be Russians, Ukranians and Poles who had been captured on the Eastern Front and impressed into serving as labor battalions for the German army. Apparently they were only too eager to surrender.

Because we were so near the water and the sand was so loose, it was very difficult to dig foxholes except near the seawall, which was further up the hill. On the night of June 6th we were in a "4 hours on and 4 hours off" mode, which meant we would do guard duty for 4 hours and then get four hours off, during which time we would try to get some sleep - which was almost impossible because of the unceasing drone of airplanes overhead the noise of the naval bombardment and the sound of exploding shells. That night I took my 4 hours "off" on the beach in a sleeping bag just in front of the seawall, where the monument to the 1st Engineer Special Brigade now stands. The Allies had such complete control of the air, that I do not remember a single instance when a German plane strafed us or dropped bombs in our area.

In the next few days a constant stream of Allied traffic landed on our beach - tanks, trucks, jeeps, bulldozers and other earth-moving equipment, ambulances and American, French and Polish soldiers. They all moved from the beach to the seawall and then on to the causeway which led inland from the beach and which kept being shelled by the Germans as they retreated from St.Mere Eglise.

Shortly after landing we had learned that the general area in which we found ourselves was called Utah Beach and the specific area was called, as I now remember it, "Uncle Red" beach. My outfit was given various assignments, almost always relating to picking up, guarding and transporting prisoners of war. From time to time we were ordered to move over the seawall to where soldiers of the 4th Division and the 82nd Airborne were now firmly in control of St. Mere Eglise, to pick up prisoners, bring them back to the beach, stand guard over them while they were in the pens we had built and move them out to boats which would take them back to England, the United States and Canada. We were also assigned guard duty at night to protect against any German soldiers who might seek to infiltrate our lines or mount a counter-attack. Sometimes, armed with electric torches, we were tasked to regulate traffic on the beach which could sometimes get a little hectic if several ships were disgorging their personnel and equipment at the same time.